


the divine made flesh

by renquise



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Literal Healing Sex, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 16:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17881604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: “And, and I asked the Traveler if I could do anything else, because I’m all out of spells, and Caduceus is too, and the Traveler said, well, he said that I could maybe channel something though our bodies, and I said, what does that even mean, and he said, bringing him to completion, and I said, oh, you mean sex, like giving him an orgasm. And he said yes, it might work.”Perhaps Caleb misheard.“I know that sounds a little weird!” Jester lifts her hands helplessly.





	the divine made flesh

**Author's Note:**

> Ah er um. A fill for [this prompt](https://criticalkink.dreamwidth.org/3194.html?thread=929658#cmt929658) at the kinkmeme? I'm so taken with the idea of these three and the balance of their personalities. (And the idea of Caduceus being not terribly interested in sex, but chill with helping someone out, especially if there's a kind of a ritual component to it?)

Caleb wakes.

It takes him long moments to gather himself, to take stock of his situation. He knows that he aches everywhere. He doesn’t know where he is. 

Move. Make yourself useful.

He starts to sit up and—a jolt of agony bursts through his chest, stealing his breath. He wrenches the scream back, holds it inside his chest. He can’t breathe. 

A moment of inattention, he remembers now, a moment when he was too busy juggling spells, a counterspell ready in one hand, his other hand reaching into his pocket to find molasses, and he saw Nott on the other side of the battlefield, dodging behind something, and she went down, hard, her quick darting body going limp, and he was useless, completely useless—

And then, the air driven out of his lungs, an enormous, crushing force, and agony, and—nothing.

A grey cast creeps into the edges of his vision, threatening to drag him down again. He clutches onto consciousness. Breathes through the pain. Acknowledges it, then lets it go. The body is a vessel and nothing more, pain merely a signal that something is not fully functional.

When his vision clears, he sees Jester leaning over him, twisting her fingers together, the symbol of the Traveler in her hands.

“Caleb! Caleb, oh, you’re awake. Oh, that’s good, that’s really good.” 

There’s tears in her voice, and Caleb feels doubly useless. He clears his throat, trying to gather enough breath to speak. His chest feels too loose, and he’s having trouble getting an entire breath into his lungs, his breathing shallow. But the pain is manageable.

“Nott—” 

“She’s fine! Everyone is fine.” Jester lets out a gusting sigh, scrubbing her face with her hands. “Everyone is fine. We managed to get the poison out of Nott, and she’s okay. Beau was kind of beat up, but we got her steady, and she’s doing okay too. They’re sleeping it off now. Yasha and Fjord are keeping an eye on them. Um, what else. We’re at an inn. We managed to bring you guys here. It’s a good thing Yasha and I are super strong.” 

He closes his eyes. Opens them again. Good. “That’s good.”

Jester bites her lip. She ghosts her hand over him, indicating his leg, both of his arms, his ribs. 

“Caduceus and I, we managed to heal you, but Caleb, you were like. Crushed. Your bones—we managed to put them back together, but they’re still broken. They’re splinted now, and we wrapped your ribs. So don't move too much.”

Sure enough, he can feel the familiar grinding in his chest of loose ribs. It's good to know. 

“Thank you,” he says, for lack of anything to say.

Jester huffs out a breath, ruffling her bangs. She pauses, again. It seems unlike her. 

"Caleb, you were so hurt. Your bones felt like dust inside you, before we healed you. You’re still so hurt. It’s really scary."

Caleb isn’t sure if he should apologize for scaring her. He doesn’t know what to say, otherwise. He reaches out to her, but he can't seem to even lift his arm, although his skin seems unbroken, from what he can see. 

He once asked Jester and Caduceus to explain their healing magic to him, curious about its functioning and its variations. It works from the outside in, from what he understood of their joint wandering explanations: first knitting up the surface and then progressing to damages further inside. It's strange to realize that he can feel the distinction where he is still not fully healed, his skin whole, but a grinding ache sitting deep in his bones. He is aware of the dangers of letting those deeper wounds go unheeded. 

He looks to Jester, pulling himself back to the conversation.

“And, and I asked the Traveler if I could do anything else, because I’m all out of spells, and Caduceus is too, and the Traveler said, well, he said that I could maybe channel something though our bodies, and I said, what does that even mean, and he said, bringing him to completion, and I said, oh, you mean sex, like giving him an orgasm. And he said yes, it might work.”

Perhaps he misheard. He did just regain consciousness, after all.

“I know that sounds a little weird!” Jester lifts her hands helplessly.

Ah. Perhaps fevered hallucinations, then.

“You’re, ah, sure that this isn’t the Traveler playing a prank?”

Jester’s face falls, and Caleb regrets saying it at once.

“It’s just—you are very funny, Jester, and—”

Jester cuts through his babbling, her face setting into determination.

“No. He wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that to you, Caleb.” She pats his arm, laughing shakily. “It's serious! I wouldn’t make jokes about that.”

Caleb doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to. To, make it sound like I don’t—" Focus. "You don't have to. I’ll survive.”

Jester huffs. “Caleb. You’ve got, like, three limbs broken in a bunch of places and your ribs are real fucked up, and that has to got hurt a whole lot. It’s fine.” She smiles, even though it looks a little sad, a little desperate. “Besides, I want to try this, right? And, and I asked Caduceus, and he said that the Wildmother might be able to do something similar, and that he could help.”

Caleb hears the creak of the door behind him. When he tilts his head towards the sound—slow, slow, don’t jostle anything—he sees Caduceus setting a tea set down on the floor. He wonders his good timing is deliberate, part and parcel of Caduceus's uncanny insight.

Caleb hears Jester heave a sigh. “Caduceus! I’m trying to convince Caleb not to be stupid and to let us help him.”

Caduceus folds himself down to perch on the edge of the bed. He no longer has his armor on, and he's down to his soft, flowing underclothes. The sight is more comforting than it should be. 

“Mr. Caleb. I’m glad to see that you’re awake.”

Caleb tries to gather together his thoughts, to ask an appropriate question. He opens his mouth. Closes it. 

Caduceus saves him from having to formulate words. “Here. I brought you something that might take the edge off the pain a bit. Jester, could you help him hold his head up so I can get this into him?” 

“Oh! Oh, yeah.” She shifts under him, lifting him up slowly enough that it almost doesn’t hurt, and props his head in her lap. 

Caduceus brings the teacup to his lips, tipping it slowly, and Caleb feels the liquid fill his mouth. He tries to swallow, almost chokes—but Caduceus settles his fingers on his throat, massaging it to help him get the liquid down. It’s not very dignified, but he manages to drink. In a matter of minutes, the stabbing sharpness of the pain becomes blunted, still aching and present, but more bearable. 

“Good,” Caduceus says, looking pleased. “So, Jester told you that we might have a plan to get you healed up, right?” 

Caleb feels a hysterical laugh building in his chest. “I’ve, ah, been told that it involves my dick. I am not sure whether to believe that.”

“Well, yep,” Caduceus says easily. “That’s the jist of it.”

Okay. “And you’re on board with this plan, as well?”

Caduceus tilts his head to the side, considering. “I haven’t done it before, but I know how it works. I don’t mind. The Wildmother has her ways of working, and this can sometimes be part of it.”

“We just want to help you,” Jester says.

Her voice is tight, a little scared. Caleb wants to reassure her. He has been through worse, and he could easily wait until the next morning. He doesn’t need this. Doesn’t deserve this. 

But he recognizes the stubborn, determined set to her jaw, and protests no further. 

“Well. I’m always up for new magic.”

Jester strokes his hair back, darting forward to kiss his forehead. “Okay! That’s okay, then. Okay. Okay, cool.”

It’s awkward to get everyone situated. Caleb is thoroughly useless, lightheaded with the wave of pain that consumes him when he tries to move. He abandoned dignity a long time ago, but he still feels a twinge of shame at having to rely so thoroughly on both of them. 

Jester maneuvers him easily, careful not to move him too much as the two of them shift onto the bed, surrounding him. He's not proud of the noises he makes. He’s helpless and base in their arms, no spells to speak and no legs to walk on, a wounded animal curled up in their laps. With anyone else, it might make him panic, make him want to find a shadowed place and hide. With them—it’s okay. It’s doable.

Jester shifts behind him until she has him propped up against her chest, her strong arms holding him up. The angle makes breathing easier. He can feel the fine weave of her skirt underneath him with his shirt rucked up. His breeches are already gone, maybe cut away when they splinted his leg and his arms.

Caduceus reaches for something over the edge of the bed. It turns out to be a small earthenware pot, the kind that Caduceus has in multitudes in his pack. When he opens it, there’s a strong herbal smell. He reaches for Jester’s hand and drops a dollop in it. 

“Is this, like, part of the ritual for the Wildmother?” Jester asks curiously, spreading it in her palm and holding it up to her nose. “It smells nice. Like the herb garden my mom had on the rooftop.”

Caduceus shrugs, smiling. “Well, no, it just might make things go easier. But who knows, maybe the Wildmother might like it, too.”

"I hope so!" Jester takes a deep breath. “Okay. Caleb. Don’t move too much, because that might fuck up your ribs even more, okay?”

She reaches over him and wraps her strong, soft hand around his dick. It almost drives the breath from Caleb’s lungs, even with her warning. 

She strokes him, her touch curious, assessing. Caleb shudders. The sensation is confusing. Her touch feels good, but he aches everywhere. It feels akin to holding his hands under water so cold that it feels hot, his nerves sparking with strangeness. He closes his eyes, trying to make sense of it.

“Is that okay?” Jester says, her tone nervous. 

He nods. It’s fine. He’ll be fine.

“Caleb,” Jester says, her voice stern, even through the nervousness. “You have to talk to us, if we want this to work properly. Because we’re the clerics, and you have to tell us how you feel so we can heal you, okay?

He breathes, in, and out. Opens his eyes again. “It’s. It’s a lot. But it feels fine.”

Jester beams, patting his chest. She looks a little flushed. “Good! Good.”

She strokes him again, more firmly, and his body responds to her touch despite the ache. He tries to keep still, as she asked, but he's grateful for Caduceus’s big hands at his hips keeping him still and steady. Caleb is half in his lap, the homespun weave of Caduceus’s loose pants under his bare limbs.

Caduceus is looking at him, his heavy-lashed gaze curious. A bright lock of hair falls out of his bun, and he reaches up to tuck it back behind his ear, then drops his hand to settle at the crook of Caleb's knee, keeping him open, steadying him. His thumb strokes over the joint, as if fascinated by the play of tendons under the thin skin. It feels exposed. Caleb doesn't know why it leaves him breathless. 

Caduceus pats his leg, getting his attention. He holds up a hand. “It might work better if I’ve got something inside you. Is that something that works for you?” 

Caleb feels his mouth go dry. He nods.

A breath, two, and Caduceus pushes a long finger inside him, slow and slick, filling him. Caleb can’t help but gasp. Caduceus’s hands are careful as he works into Caleb—deliberate, almost ritualistic in the way his touch asks things of Caleb’s body. 

It takes a moment for the two of them to find a good rhythm, the two of them exchanging glances over his body. Caduceus’s fingers are deft and long, and there’s an almost clinical precision to the way that Caduceus works him over inside and out, the steady, insistent touch inside him twinned to the firm pressure of a thumb on the thin skin behind his balls. He doesn't know whether his body wants to shrink away from the touch or lean into it, the ache in his ribs pulsing with his heartbeat, all his nerves over-bright and jangling, even with the dulling effect of the tea.

“Mr. Caleb. You have to tell us what you need, okay? Otherwise this isn’t going to work.”

“I—I need more,” he asks. “Please.” He knows his body, the way he needs a tight hand around his cock, a firm touch inside him. 

Jester’s grip tightens, and all his nerves light up. He can't even lift a hand to muffle the gasp that escapes from him. 

It’s almost too much. There's a singular intensity to being helpless to their hands. He feels like raw material, clay being shaped to a new form, held between the two of them and their gods.

It feels too familiar, just for a moment. Eodwulf inside him and Astrid astride his face, their bodies still aching from training and being made anew. 

Caleb pushes it away, taking a deliberate, aching breath, his ribs grinding against each other, the pain sharp and grounding.

He can hear them talking quietly over him, and it takes him long seconds to put the words together. 

“—doing good, there. Jester, you feel like it’s working? I’ve got a thread of something coming along, for sure.”

“Yeah,” Jester says. Her face is concentrated and lovely, her lips parted, and she nods, first tentatively, then more firmly. She tightens her grasp on his dick, her eyes fluttering shut, a line between her eyebrows. “Yeah. Oh, that’s kind of weird. Kind of cool, though. I think I can feel you, Caduceus? It feels like, like putting my hands in a mud puddle. In a good way? Caleb, if you’re listening, I’m not calling your dick a mud puddle.”

He huffs out a laugh, jolting all over when the movement shifts his ribs. The jolt of pain spikes through him, twisted up with the intense, unyielding pleasure of their hands on him, and he shudders, his body unsure, confused with sensation. 

It’s too much of everything and not enough of it. He strains against their hands, reaching for something, anything.

“Steady there, steady,” Caduceus rumbles, his thumb stroking over Caleb’s knee. He blinks at him slowly, a banked glow behind his long lashes. “We’ve got you.”

He gives himself over to them.

When he comes, it rips through him like a tide, filling him up and emptying him out. He fumbles for a hand, finds Jester’s smooth, warm fingers, hears her gasp. And everything is light, searing across his raw nerve endings, sublime and agonizing and beautiful. 

Eventually, he opens his eyes. He feels exhausted, boneless, every bit of his limbs alight with a foreign warmth. He doesn’t think he could move, even if he wanted to. 

Jester is panting, disheveled. She pats him down. “Okay. Your ribs are better now, right? How about your leg?” 

He takes a tentative breath, deeper than he dared to before. It works. It’s nice to be able to breathe without strain. He nods, not trusting his voice yet. 

Caduceus passes his hands over his leg, removing the splint and squeezing along the length of his thigh. “Hm. Feels okay? Hey, I think it worked.”

Jester beams. “Ho-ly shit. Caduceus, we sexed him back to health!” She reaches over Caleb’s shoulder, holding her palm out. “That was. So. Cool.”

Caduceus high-fives her with his usual smiling bemusement. “Not sure I understood exactly what happened there, but hey, it worked.” He looks at his palm, then wipes it on the covers.

“Whoops, should have used the other hand,” Jester says cheerfully. “That one was covered in Caleb come.”

Caleb covers his face. Ah.

“Oh, Caleb, you get all red all down your chest,” Jester says, delighted. “I didn’t see that! I was concentrating too hard on the other stuff.”

Caduceus pats Caleb’s leg, tugging his shirt back down to cover him. Then, Caduceus blinks, wavers for a second, and slowly topples over, his long body barely fitting onto the mattress.

“Oh. Okay. I think that was a lot. Phew.”

Caleb feels a twist of panic in his chest. “Are you—”

Caduceus waves a long, lazy hand at him. “I’m fine. Just tired. Jester, how are you doing?”

“I am going to nap, right now, immediately,” Jester says, crawling over them to flop over as well. “Scoot over. Caduceus, you are too tall and you are very fuzzy, so I’m going to lie on you.”

“All right,” Caduceus says easily.

The bed barely fits all three of them, but Caleb is still too tired to move, and has no inclination to. 

He feels strange, his body heavy and present but his nerve endings still alight with something unknowable. But Caduceus slings a long arm over them and Jester pulls them in, and the sensation settles, the divine made familiar flesh and body. 

Caleb lets sleep pull him under, tethered by their hands.


End file.
